Education Policy & School Reform News

The head of Florida’s Education Department is urging parents to “be involved” in public schools for their children’s sake.  “Parents are the most important teacher, and the child’s first teacher, and ultimately are responsible for these kids,” Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. told Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts. “These kids don’t belong to the…

Two giants among publishers of children’s books and textbooks are selling the idea of “gender” to small children. But are Americans buying? Scholastic, one of the world’s largest publishers and distributors of children’s books, released a “Resource Guide” for parents and teachers promoting its “Read With Pride” series. The guide is aimed at children of…

There’s a war being waged for America’s elementary, middle, and high school students. But the leftist agenda-driven campaign that began behind the closed doors of teachers unions and government-run schools is now out in the open and has led to a “parent revolution,” says Corey DeAngelis.  The “teachers unions overplayed their hand and awakened a…

Parents, children, and supporters of school choice have cause to celebrate this National Charter Schools Week. Charter schools earned the top two spots on a list of the best high schools in America, according to a recent report by U.S. News & World Report. And, of the top 100 public high schools, charter schools claimed…

The Columbia University anti-Israel encampment has been cleared out, but the New York school continues to beclown itself. According to a report by the Washington Free Beacon’s Aaron Sibarium, the student editors of the Columbia Law Review issued a statement on Wednesday, calling on Columbia Law School to cancel final exams. They wrote that it…

The decay in American education is an alarming national security threat. Most high school or college graduates know about little more than their sexual orientation or Taylor Swift’s juvenile lyrics and strutting. They are unable to write a single, succinct, evocative sentence, like the magnificence of a “rosy-fingered dawn.” They could not pass the civics…

Monday may have been Education Secretary Miguel Cordona’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. The ink was barely dry on the Education Department’s vast rewrite of Title IX before three separate federal lawsuits were filed in quick succession in courthouses in Louisiana, Texas, and Alabama. The essential elements of each lawsuit share a common…

The Department of Education just released its long-delayed Title IX rule—a rewrite of the 50 year-old civil rights law so vast that it promises to turn Title IX’s guarantee of sex equality in education completely upside down.   Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972 is all of a single sentence. It simply…

Millions of students each year rely on student loans and grants to afford the rising cost of college. This year, that’s about 17 million Americans. They fill out the Federal Application for Federal Student Aid, known as the FAFSA. But this year, the U.S. Department of Education is very far behind in processing the forms,…

A total eclipse crossed the country this week in a display of natural wonder. Rather than seize the opportunity for an engaging science lesson, hundreds of school districts with several hundred thousand students decided to close for the day, many citing safety concerns that students might accidentally look at the eclipse without proper eye protection….

Schools across the country routinely inform parents—and often must obtain their written permission—about all sorts of things, from a trip to the zoo to taking a Tylenol.   A field trip might make Johnny’s day, and a Tylenol might make his headache go away, but they won’t profoundly change the way he understands the world…

As suicide rates, sexual assaults, mass depression, and anxiety grip America’s youth, the Biden administration, state legislatures, and public school districts have begun usurping science education with “transgender and gender-nonconforming” curriculum. Students in over a dozen states no longer have access to biologically based sex education; that’s been replaced by liberal laws and policies requiring…

Several states are making progress empowering their citizens with access to education freedom and opportunity. Earlier this month, Alabama became the 15th state in the nation to enact a program providing education savings accounts and the 10th state to enact universal education choice. Last week, South Carolina and Louisiana took steps to become the 11th…